Anyway, culture and nation are partners, inextricable from each other. National culture and nation, they are reciprocities.

Snowboarding allows you to create your own path, and for me it was awesome because no one was telling me what to do. I could go out on the mountain and try new things and learn for myself.

A wedding is at once a crowded place and a private room, packed with trusts and empty of all but the heart's letters which one other heart may read and decipher.

A wedding is earth and water and a species of irreducible light and the flat belly of a harbor and a mango about to ripen and fall into gravity's caress and the waves subsiding and resuming their concerto in a minor key and the rush hour canceled by the stun of auspicious beginnings.

Stay excited and stay humble and good things will come.

My intention is not to repudiate an African American identity but perhaps to resist how labels take hold, or to make it as slow a process as possible. That's more my sense of it.

The best thing you can do is to keep riding your snowboard and love what you're doing. Without a passion for the sport it's difficult to take your riding to the next level.